Counseling Couples in Conflict

A Relational Restoration Model

James N. Sells, Mark A. Yarhouse

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780830839254
• eBook ISBN: 9780830868490
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy

Most therapeutic approaches, especially those of a cognitive orientation, are not very effective in dealing with high conflict relationships--couples often heading toward divorce by the time they seek help. Counseling Couples in Conflict is a resource for counselors and therapists who want to be ready for these uniquely difficult cases. Utilizing a relational conflict and restoration model Mark Yarhouse and James Sells point the way beyond the cycle of pain towards marital healing.

Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) Books explore how Christianity relates to mental health and behavioral sciences including psychology, counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapy in order to equip Christian clinicians to support the well-being of their clients.

Part One

THE PREFACE TO
MARITAL COUNSELING

1

MARRIAGE AT A CRUCIAL STAGE OF EXISTENCE

The First Bond of Society is Marriage.

CICERO

TAESONG-DONG MIGHT BE THE VERY worst place to live on the face of the earth. It is the lone village in South Korea that nestles next to its North Korean “sister city” Kichong-dong. No one actually lives on the North Korean side, but in Taesong-dong about two hundred farmers go about their work tending fields as their ancestors have for centuries. They do so with more than one million armed soldiers surrounding them with explosive firepower to seriously affect the quality of the next crop! They stand between two warring powers, quietly going about their business, hoping that they are not destroyed because those around them cannot get along.

We see you, as pastors, professional therapists and lay counselors, sitting in a similar spot, though slightly less lethal. You are placed between two parties who have declared war on each other. Tension is often thick when each side meets in the neutrality of your office. Everyone knows that a misunderstood gesture here, or a comment poorly chosen there, could ignite the standoff that has existed for years.

Those who work with couples know from experience the “cold war” of marriage. Whether or not they are familiar with the data on marriage, pastors and counselors meet every week with couples whose marriages reflect the changes in our culture. It may feel like a siege. The definition and value of marriage has changed for many, pitting one side against the other. Marriage counselors sit in the middle of the fight. Couples come to pastoral counselors worn out by the standoff that has occurred within their home. They may be separated and considering whether reconciliation is ever possible. Other couples may sit down with a pastor and are essentially asking permission to pursue a divorce or have made up their minds that it is inevitable. Some are dealing with the common concerns of financial stress, communication problems or sexual difficulties that place a strain on the marriage. Still other couples may be dealing with the immediate concerns of perhaps sexual infidelity, pornography use or the ubiquitous press on couples for their time, as they balance overscheduled lives that keep them from enjoying the marriage the way they thought they would. Amid it all sits you—the pastor, marital therapist or lay counselor—armed with a white flag and the hope of the Christian message, being charged with the task of bringing peace to opposing forces.

THE STATE OF THE UNION

What is the state of our marital unions today? What are marriages today struggling with, exactly? How bad is it? Can counseling make a difference in families? If so, how? These are the kinds of questions that can really get a pastoral counselor thinking. It is important to get a sense for how things are, while recognizing that it is only one part of a larger story. So while we will look at the state of the (marital) union, we want to remember that there are many benefits to marriage that will also be important for the counselor to keep in mind.

As we’ll demonstrate, there are two conflicting realities in regard to our culture’s attitude toward marriage. The first is that marriage is seen as a passé institution that restricts individual happiness. The second is that first-time married couples report the highest degree of personal happiness compared with single, cohabitating or divorced adults. We see data that offers discouraging evidence of the state of families in the twenty-first century, but we also see ample evidence in the research data that suggests the merit, worth and vitality of marriage and the benefits of marital intervention by pastors and professional and lay counselors. This evidence suggests that the craft you practice has a positive, immediate and lasting effect on marriages. Furthermore, the data suggests that rebuilding marriages has a positive effect on subsequent generations of marriage—far beyond the issues that husbands and wives must address, but literally on the second and third generations.

The state of divorce. When we look at rates of divorce, we can say that young married couples in their first marriage have about a 40 percent divorce rate.1 The divorce rate rises for those who marry again. The divorce rate is also affected by level of education: those with a college education have about a 30 percent divorce rate compared to about a 60 percent divorce rate for those who do not complete high school.2 Other factors have been studied that are connected in some way to an increased likelihood of divorce, including living together before marriage, having religious differences, marrying at a younger age, and having seen one’s parents’ divorce.3

Looking at divorce by itself doesn’t tell the whole story. Our culture is changing; the way that we see marriage and divorce has shifted. We can see differences in attitudes toward marriage, in whether it is valued as an important arrangement or whether it is something people feel much less passionate about. If people feel rather casual about relationship commitment, they might be less likely to value marriage as a place where such commitment is required. Also, if people focus more on what they believe is best for them, they may put more stock in self-interest over something like marriage with the creation of a new relationship, one that demands sacrifice through placing others before oneself.4

Marital cynicism. As to marriage, cynicism abounds. The humor of Johnny Carson still reflects a pervading attitude of our day: “If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.” Our culture questions a lot of traditional structures and sources of knowledge. This is partly a product of our age—we live in a postmodern society that not only questions but openly challenges traditional views and norms. We are also at a place where we have seen the casualties of both poor marriages and broken marriages, and we may be witness to more people wondering whether “any couple can make marriage work as a life-long union.”5

Some experts on marriage have pointed to the appeal of “serial monogamy,”6 or what we refer to as the “Seinfeld effect.” Do you remember the popular sitcom from the 1990s? The message was loud and clear that marriage was devastating to a person’s freedom, friendships, social life, sex life and so on. The cultural and social changes represented in a show that derides marriage impact our society by contributing to decreased expectations that people marry. The benefits of not getting married can frequently be romanticized.

Perhaps related to this is the idea that people today possess greater wealth and can live independently. Individuals are able to make ends meet, and therefore do not value or need marriage the way they might have even thirty years ago. Some women and men may give serious consideration to divorce in life circumstances in which divorce would not really have been a viable consideration only a few short years ago.7

That is a sobering view of marriage. We could focus our attention on rates of divorce and cultural messages that devalue marriage. We could join in with the cynics who question whether any marriage can last, let alone a sizable percentage of marriages. But we find it more helpful to reflect on how marriage has remained in many circles a desired social institution. Despite all of the threats to marriage, why has marriage remained an ideal that so many people ascribe to? Why do we celebrate when we come across announcements of thirty-and forty-and fifty-year anniversaries?

Marriage as a desired social institution. Marriage remains one of the most stable and desired social institutions and the one place of interface between religious and secular entities, as most people who marry do so within a church environment.

What is the appeal of marriage? Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee have a helpful book titled The Good Marriage: How & Why Love Lasts. In it they discuss how people look for a love that lasts, and that this is true even in cases of longstanding marriages that unfortunately end in divorce—people continue to look for sustained relationships. Not only does marriage protect us from loneliness, but marriage and, by extension, family, provide a sense of meaning and continuity:

A man and woman in a good, lasting marriage with children feel connected with the past and have an interest in the future. A family makes an important link in the chain of human history. By sharing responsibility for the next generation, parents can find purpose and a strengthened sense of identity.8

Perhaps now more than any other time in human history, people are able to choose marriage or not, or they can choose marriage for a time and then decide whether to continue in it or to dissolve it.

Wallerstein and Blakeslee point out the changes in support for marriage over time:

Think of marriage as an institution acted upon by centripetal forces pulling inward and centrifugal forces pulling outward. In times past the centripetal forces—law, tradition, religion, parental influence—exceeded those that could pull a marriage apart, such as infidelity, abuse, financial disaster, failed expectations, or the lure of the frontier. Nowadays the balance has changed. The weakened centripetal forces no longer exceed those that tug marriages apart.9

Despite these changes, marriages remain an attractive institution to those who are married and to those who are single. Why is it valued so? It may have to do with some of the benefits experienced in marriage. These benefits appear to come through changes people experience when they marry. Marriage seems to change people. It reorients people’s goals, and it can transform people’s experiences.10

When it comes to goals, marriage helps people think about their future. It helps them make better choices about health-promoting activities, including diet/nutrition and financial decisions, such as saving for the future. Marriage gives people a better sense for the part they play in their own future.

Marriage also affects one’s well-being. People who are married report greater life satisfaction. They are happier. They are less depressed and less anxious. They enjoy greater sexual fulfillment. They have decreased rates of mortality.

The following benefits to healthy marriages were also recently summarized on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website:11

• Women are more likely to have a better relationship with their kids, be emotionally and physically healthier, and be better off financially. They are less likely to get a sexually transmitted disease, be a victim of a violent crime, or to be in poverty.
• Men live longer, are physically and emotionally healthier, are better off financially, have greater stability at work and greater income, have a more satisfying sexual relationship, and have better relationships with their kids. They are less likely to commit a violent crime, attempt suicide, contract an STD, or abuse drugs or alcohol.
• Good marriages are also good for a community. Married couples tend to be better educated, more likely to own their home, and have higher property values. They also have lower rates of domestic violence, crime, teen pregnancy, and need for social services. They are good for communities.

A GOOD MARRIAGE

There is no one type of good or healthy marriage. They come in different shapes and sizes. In one report,12 however, healthy marriages held many things in common, including a commitment to children, satisfaction, communication, conflict resolution, faithfulness and emotional support.

Types of good marriages. In their book The Good Marriage, Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee identify four different types of good marriages: romantic, rescue, companionate and traditional.13

The first type, romantic marriage, is characterized by enduring memories of excitement and romance. The second type they call the rescue marriage, in which spouses benefit from a kind of healing of prior emotional pain or loss from earlier in their lives. The third type, companionate marriage, is one in which couples are able to strike a balance between their commitments to their careers and to their marriage and children.

The last broad type of good marriage identified by the researchers is referred to as the traditional marriage. This is one that maintains more of a traditional divide between public and private domains, with the man functioning as breadwinner in the public domain while the woman has more responsibilities in the private domains of the home and childbearing.

Creating a good marriage. In their study, Wallerstein and Blakeslee identify nine tasks that they advise couples to take on to create a good marriage. Some of these overlap with what is referred to as the family life cycle. For example, the first two tasks are: separating from the family you grew up in, and forming a new family together. The third task is to become parents. As the authors put it, “Children brought special meaning to the lives of happily married couples.”14

The fourth task is to cope with crises. Although crises take many different forms, ranging from unemployment to health concerns such as cancer, it is important to turn toward one another and toward a good social support network rather than away from one another or in pain in isolation from potentially supportive relationships.

All meaningful relationships create opportunities for conflict. The fifth task of a good marriage is to be a place in which it is safe to have conflicts; a place in which the couple has built “a relationship that is safe for the expression of difference, conflict, and anger.”15 Early conflicts can establish key insights into the sources of different values and expectations, as well as the experience of safety and trust the couple has in one another.

The sixth task identified by Wallerstein and Blakeslee is to create and protect a fulfilling sex life together. There is also a great deal of variability here; couples create their own sex life, and it becomes a place of transparency and vulnerability, but also an opportunity to express and exper...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One - The Preface to Marital Counseling
• Part Two - The Process of Conflict and Restoration
• Part Three - Marital Counseling Applied
• Index
• CAPS International
• Notes
• Praise for Counseling Couples in Conflict
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright Page